Hooray for October!

Oh, I love this month! It's just the right temperature to have the windows open most days with a few warmer days and a few with a chill. That makes it so easy to freshen up the house and do a few re-organization projects so that everything is taken care of before we really close up the house for winter. The urge to knit is definitely back with the cooler evenings so I'm finishing up mittens and hats.



I've been hunting down bins with winter jackets and snow pants, relocating mittens and hats from the last few years, replacing our short sleeves and shorts with longer, woolier things. Socks have made an appearance for the first time since last spring! And my very favorite October thing came to be yesterday - two little boys in overalls . . .



In the midst of all this extra cleaning and re-ordering I've felt this pressure about all the other things that I should be doing and an overwhelming feeling about losing my prayer time in the mornings. After being sick for two weeks Ezra's body is still confused about what his sleep cycle should be and he is rising ever earlier. I feel like my body is already at a limit and if I try to get up earlier than he does at this point I will be a mess of exhaustion all day long. I have found my prayer space instead in the liturgy of keeping house, in the repetitiveness of my day. The simple actions of folding a basket of laundry with its repetitive motion almost begs contemplation, and the work of washing all this winter clothing has become extended prayer time in the last few days. Since realizing this and taking full advantage of my chore time it has turned from drudgery to refreshment- maybe not in body, but certainly in mind.



We have a lot of outdoor plans for this month and next before snow and ice arrive.



:: apple picking

:: a visit to the pumpin patch

:: leaf collecting along with lots of leaf tracing and rubbing

:: a visit to "our" lake . . . the one where we were engaged 9 years ago on a very windy evening

:: birthdays for two of my sisters-in-law

:: The birthday of a very special boy who was once my sweet little baby but in just a few days will be a FOUR-year-old boy. How did that happen? After days and days of him asking how many days until his family birthday party we made a long paper chain to count down the number of "sleeps" until that grand day. Now his chain has just one last little link on it and I have no idea where the days have gone.